Where almost anything goes...

Arno Nickel is the General Manager of InfinityChess. He is one of the world’s leading grandmasters in correspondence chess (currently German’s board 3 in the 16th ICCF Olympia Final) and a well-known promoter of Freestyle Chess. Under his nicks “Ciron” and “Take 5” he won numerous prizes in online chess. He is also appreciated as writer on chess matters and organiser of chess tournaments. His place of living is Berlin.

Fifth
Freestyle Tournament Final this weekend22.03.2007– The 5th PAL/CSS
Freestyle Main Tournament, staged on the Playchess server, ended in a dead heat
of 17 players. None of the 131 participants from 32 countries, including 20
titled players, managed to achieve six points in eight games, which is the magic
barrier for qualification. The final, with ten players, will be held as a round
robin tournament this weekend. Come and watch.

Big Fight in the Freestyle Final on March 23rd-25th

l

By Berlin correspondence chess GM Arno Nickel

The final will take place on the Playchess.com server from Friday to Sunday,
March 23-25, 2007, with the first round starting at 14:00h server time each day.
It will be a round robin tournament, with each participant playing one game
against all other participants. Time controls are 60 minutes + 15 seconds
increment per move.

Can Grandmasters play Freestyle?

Two or three tournaments back it would have been a sensation, if
grandmasters like Hikaru Nakamura (FIDE Elo 2651) failed to achieve more than 50
percent in the Freestyle Main Tournament. Nowadays any experienced Freestyle
player or even kibitz is no longer surprised. Players like him will always play
beautiful games, with lots of ideas, but they are vulnerable when it comes to
deep tactics on the board, especially in a rapid game 60m + 15s. Although they
have Fritz or other advisors at their disposal, they will always try to force
their own moves and only realize that something went wrong with their plan when
it’s already too late. Someone asked “Star Wars” (H. Nakamura) in the chat
whether he uses Rybka, which is the most popular Freestyle engine running as UCI
engine under the Fritz or ChessBase. His answer: “I use my brain, because its
better than Rybka on 6/7 days of the week.”

Real Freestyle experts use about four computers with different engines, and
unlike GM Nakamura will never trust their own play, if it is not accepted by at
least one of their engines. That does not necessarily mean they are simply
playing computer moves. They try to check the full information provided by the
engines, and they recognise the weaknesses and the strengths of their analysis
tools. They know when a king’s attack may come into consideration and when it’s
a storm in a teacup. They know when a fortress can be built, even if the engines
say they are losing. And they know when a pawn or the exchange can be sacrificed
to seize the initiative or to achieve counterplay. But they will never decide
such things without consulting their engines. That’s the main difference between
real Freestyle experts and inexperienced grandmasters.

There are Freestyle teams consisting of computer experts and grandmasters.
Experience has shown that strong correspondence chess players with much practice
in computer analysis form a third group of experts. Maybe the computer expert of
a team is a strong player himself, as is the case with International Master
Vasik Rajlich, who is the Rybka programmer. What is his role when he is playing
together with a high-class grandmaster? It doesn't make much sense to waste time
discussing the general plan. It is much more important that he checks and
analyses the computer lines. His main task should be to conduct and translate
the dialogue between the engine and the grandmaster, keeping both from going
wrong. Rajlich’s team, with GM Michal Krasenkov and IM Iweta Radziewicz, was the
winner of the 3rd Freestyle Final, and keeps the lead in the Freestyle Elo list
we published in our last article. Unfortunately the Rajlich team dropped out of
the group of leading teams in the 5th Main Tournament, when they forgot to
recapture a rook in the seventh round. Their opponent, “Ultra-d”, an engine-only
player, was so confused and embarrassed about the situation that he did not know
what to do: take the point or offer a draw (his position was a bit worse before
the incident occurred). Unable to decide it by himself he consulted the
Tournament Director, who felt Ultra-d should be protected against any pressure
from the chat and from his opponent (who in fact remained very polite when
asking for a way of accommodation). I believe that the TD should have left the
decision to Ultra-d, but instead he forbade both players from agreeing to a
draw. I don’t know if he regret this decision later on, but in order to keep the
reputation of the Freestyle organisation I have to state that this has been his
last decision as a Freestyle TD.

Sometimes grandmasters and other strong players enter a Freestyle Main
Tournament and withdraw after an unpromising start. That is what Israeli GM
Ronen Har-Zvi did, leaving the tournament after a loss in the first round. Some
people would like to see such withdrawals punished, but that’s more complicated
in practice than they think. Fortunately the number of withdrawals has not been
a real problem in the our Freestyle series. There are also positive examples,
like the Russian GM Vladimir Belov (Elo 2600), who also lost his first round
game but stuck to the tournament until the very end, achieving 4.5 points out of
eight games.

Before we come to the Final this weekend let’s take a look at the top
standings of the Main Tournament (the complete list is given by a link at the
bottom):

5th Freestyle Main Event 2007 (Time: 60m + 15s, 8 rounds)

1

Cato the Younger, Rybka 2.3 mp FSCD

5.5 / 8

28.50

2

Flying Saucers

5.5 / 8

27.50

3

ZackS

5.5 / 8

27.50

4

Rodo,Rybka 2.2 mp

5.5 / 8

27.00

5

Pulse_exchange, Rybka 2.3.1 mp 32-b

5.5 / 8

27.00

6

Etaoin Shrdlu

5.5 / 8

26.50

7

The wizard of Os

5.5 / 8

26.00

8

Ciron

5.5 / 8

26.00

9

Rainer Zufall

5.5 / 8

25.00

10

Kaputtze

5.5 / 8

25.00

11

EL-SHADDAI, Rybka 2.3.1 mp x128

5.5 / 8

24.50

12

Hercules01, Rybka 2.1o mp

5.5 / 8

24.00

13

Ultra-d, Rybka 2.3.1 mp

5.5 / 8

23.50

14

PawnStriker1978

5.5 / 8

23.50

15

Dummkoller

5.5 / 8

22.50

16

Engineer

5.5 / 8

22.00

17

Revelator

5.5 / 7

19.00

These were the 17 teams/players, who made it up to the play-offs on March
10th. The ranking was established by “progressive score”, which means summing up
each player’s points from round to round. The first three got free tickets for
the Final and the following 14 had to play mini-matches.

Each pairing played a match of two games, with time controls of 60m+15s, with
the lower ranked player having the white pieces in the first game. If the result
was 1:1 then a third game had to be played. The lower ranked player got the
white pieces and had to win in order to qualify. If this game ended in a draw,
the higher ranked player was qualified for the final. (Further games with
shorter time controls were considered, but ultimately discarded, as they would
have favoured the engine-only players.)

Here are the results of the mini-matches, with the winners marked in bold
type.

EL-SHADDAI

Rodo

1.5:1.5

Hercules01

Pulse_exchange

2.0:1.0

Ultra-d

Etaoin Shrdlu

0.5:1.5

PawnStriker1978

The wizard of Os

0.5:1.5

Dummkoller

Ciron

1.5:1.5

Engineer

Rainer Zufall

2.0:1.0

Revelator

Kaputtze

0.5:1.5

So the Final on March 23rd until 25th will be played by these ten players
(the number of rated Freestyle games is given in brackets).

Flying Saucers

DEN

2687 (33)

ZackS

USA

2639 (49)

Engineer

UKR

2635 (28)

Ciron

GER

2618 (42)

Kaputtze

GER

2492 (26)

Cato the Younger

USA

(11)

Rodo [Rybka]

ITA

(11)

Hercules01 [Rybka]

USA

(11)

Etaoin Shrdlu

CZE

(10)

The wizard of Os

NED

(10)

Some words about the finalists. Most of them are known to use very fast
computer systems with up to eight processors (four duals).

Flying Saucers, operated by the Danish centaur Dagh Nielsen,
was successful at the previous Final coming in Second.

ZackS is the legendary handle of the American Steven
Zackary, who won the 1st PAL/CSS Freestyle Tournament in 2005, together with his
friend Steven Cramton. So this looks like a comeback after about two years.

Engineer is the only certified grandmaster in the field. He
is the Ukrainian Yuri Solodovnichenko, who has an over-the-board GM title and is
a very strong correspondence chess player as well. Does he play in a team or
just only himself? The answer to such questions will be only known (hopefully)
after the tournament. It’s his first qualification to a Final.

Ciron is me in my second qualification to a Freestyle final.
I hope to do better than one year ago, when I only came seventh.

Kaputtze is the handle of Jochen Rindfleisch from Mannheim.
So far his biggest success in Freestyle.

Cato the Younger was the surprise of the Main Tournament. We
know that the owner of this handle, Nelson Hernandez from USA, already
co-operated successfully with another player under the handle Intagrand. Cato
played his first game with an automatic Rybka engine, but then switched to
centaur modus.

The Italian Rodo played with an automatic Rybka engine. In
his personal information he also gives the handle Auryn, which means he is
co-operating with the Italian chess player Eros Riccio.

Hercules01 is the second (and last) automatic Rybka,
completely unknown so far, but maybe also the second handle of a well-known
Freestyler.

Etaoin Shrdlu is a Czech centaur team, probably consisting
of players from the previous well-known handles Equidistance and Xakru. I
wouldn’t be surprised, if a strong player like IM Roman Chytilek is in this
team.

The Wizard of Os is the handle of a player named Hans van
Mierlo, another Freestyle newbie, who may be wellknown in the Dutch chess
computer scene.

As mentioned above the final will be held on Friday-Sunday, March 23-25,
2007, starting at 14:00h server time each day. It will be a round robin
tournament, with each participant playing one game against all other
participants. Time controls are 60 minutes + 15 seconds increment per move. The
winner of the final receives the first prize of US $8,000 and the title of "5th
PAL/CSS Freestyle Chess Champion". The runner up gets $4,000, and the player
coming in third $2,000.

Schedule of the Final

Round 1

Friday

23/03/2007

14:00h CET

Round 2

Friday

23/03/2007

17:00h CET

Round 3

Friday

23/03/2007

20:00h CET

Round 4

Saturday

24/03/2007

14:00h CET

Round 5

Saturday

24/03/2007

17:00h CET

Round 6

Saturday

24/03/2007

20:00h CET

Round 7

Sunday

25/03/2007

14:00h CEST

Round 8

Sunday

25/03/2007

17:00h CEST

Round 9

Sunday

25/03/2007

20:00h CEST

Note that there is a change to daylight saving time on Saturday night in
Europe.

Links

a new tournament series is going to start on March 2-4 (5th PAL/CSS Freestyle Tournament - Main).

I
hope, all of you got an e-mail from the organiser. There is also a new
Freestyle article, which has been published in German on the CSS-online
site on February 16th (see also previous announcement on February 8th).

The
English version of this article should be published on the ChessBase
site within the next days (the German version also) . But to be sure,
that all of you get this information in time, I decided to send it by
e-mail too.

A new Freestyle Series starts in March

Once again on March 2nd to 4th the Freestyle Fans will meet on playchess.com in order to find out the closest candidates for the US $16�000 dollar prize money of the 5th PAL/CSS Freestyle Tournament. The main tournament is an eight-round Swiss, whereas the final three weeks later from March 23rd to 25th
is a nine round robin tournament. The time control is 60 minutes + 15
seconds per move. Everybody may take part in this online event, whether
you are a bloody amateur or a grandmaster, and the special thing about
it is, you may use any help available � computers, friends, books, just
as you like, Freestyle is without limits. The Berlin correspondence
chess GM Arno Nickel tells you, what currently is going on in Freestyle
chess and what is planned for 2007.

�We take Fritz away from the toilet�

Such
could be a modern slogan for Freestyle promotion in order to take
advantage of the �clat from the last months. There has been a lot of
excitement and speculations since October 2006, when everybody started
to talk about cheating in chess by using computers, but that could only
cause a shake of the head by a professional Freestyle swindler. �If you
knew�� � means: what computers are good for or not, how to use them or
better not � ��then you wouldn�t talk such blue-eyed. Go and have a try
in Freestyle chess, after this you will know more about it.� A number
of grandmasters did already gain this experience, but they didn�t get
rich, at any rate not by dollars, though that actually was, what they
had aimed at.

Effective
computer assistance in chess is more ambivalent as many people really
know � by all means, when the position holds substantial problems and
there are no compulsive solutions. Each modern correspondence chess
player can sing you a song about that. Whith computer moves it is often
the same like with human advices: may be, but may also be not... Always
when a position gets complicated and the computers starts aimlessly
moving around, you should not expect an early decision for a move. An
endless sequence of lines starts filling your screen, which soon
appears to be too small, but in the end it could be, that the move you
only felt to be the best (or � as Jan Hein Donner said � the
one you �sniffed out�) in fact proves itself to be the best by
practice. Yet, did you really dare to play it, even if the engines are
constantly evaluating it as second or third best, but do favour a
different one? Happy that correspondence chess player, who � without
any time pressure � succeeds to find the correct decision, and even
more happier that Freestyle player, who is right, when his nerves are
all on edge and the clock is running faster and faster. Of course you
can choose to take the 'line of the least resistence' and let run your
engine automatically in a Freestyle tournament. That may even be of
general interest (if not too many do the same), as only then we will
face a comparison between pure computer chess and centaur chess, which
means man and machine in combined action. Now and then we could already
witness a few sensational records of 'engine alone' players, but in
spite of all credits do the most Freestyle players pay more tribute to
those, who dare to follow their own ideas and prove themselves as true
masters. So the organisers can be content with the fact, that the
'engine alone' players have evidently been a minority so far and did
not win the title of a Freestyle Champion.

Review

�Chess 2.0� was the title of a NewInChess article by Kasparov about the 1st PAL/CSS Freestyle Tournament in 2005, when he discussed the phenomenal success of two bloody US amateurs, who were playing under the handle ZackS
and snatched away from the grandmasters the US $8'000 dollar prize
money for the first place. That would be an exception from the rule, he
assumed. Since then some hundreds chess players, including well-known
titleholders and computer chess experts tried their best in order to
also enter the winner's lists.

The second tournament in spring 2006 has been won by the Arab private sponsor of the multi processor system Hydra, the formidable and famous Zor_champ,
who is a keen centaur player, but could not always spare enough time
for his hobby. After that, in summer 2006, for the first time we saw a
professional team formed by the Rybka programer and IM Vasik Rajlich catching the third title. GM Michal Krassenkow and IM Iweta Radziewicz were his team-mates. Many spectators expected the multi national trio with its residence in Budapest to dominate also the 4th PAL/CSS Freestyle Tournament in
September/October 2006, but once again it showed how difficult things
are for a favourite team in Freestyle chess. One early loss in the main
tournament turned out as the stumbling block on the way to the final.
So the sensation was perfect, when the mysterious team with the name Xakru (that
means "damn it!" in Czech) captured the victory. During the final
rumours were afloat, Shirov or another top player backed the team, and Xakru denied this in a way, that everybody was convinced from the contrary. Afterwards they outed themselves as the Czech players Jiri Dufek, a computer expert with a FIDE rating of 2276, and IM Roman Chytilek,
and they said, what is to believe, they had no other help except from
their electronical friends. One point to explain their success may have
been, that they are both experienced correspondence chess players, Roman Chytilek even
with an ICCF Elo of 2649 and of course holding the grandmaster title.
So they are well trained in using the engines. Yet leading ICCF
representatives are already discovering their heart for Freestyle chess
and thinking about tournaments of their own. Other than us they prefer
the term �rapid correspondence chess� (or �Rapid-Fernschach�, as used
in a BdF newsletter), what makes much sense from their point of view,
as correspondence players have always been �freestyle� players anyway,
but have never played with such time controls, one could even speak of
�blitz corr. play�. The ICCF has also an internet server of its own, it
will however take some time, before they can technically use it for
this special prupose and before they have approved a concept and the
rules. From the sight of the PAL/CSS organisers such intiatives are
welcomed, as both sides are interested to popularise this new kind of
online chess.

Freestyle Elo List

The
latest achievement for Freestyle chess is their own ranking list, which
has been worked out by initiative of the author and kind technical
support of Timo Klaustermeyer from CSS-online. This Freestyle Elo List does only count games played in the PAL/CSS events and does not consider the various ratings for computers and centaurs on playchess.com.
Even if we would like to make a difference between games played by
�engine only� or �centaurs�, that wouldn�t work in many cases, as the
databases do not show all needed information. Also we cannot consider
the various ressources of a player like computers, software and
team-mates. The only thing, that really counts � and this is not as
trivial as it sounds �, is the fact, whether the game has been played
regularly; that means we don�t count wins by default, when for instance
an opponent got disconnected early in the opening. The Elo rating is
always valuable for the registered player, that means to the handle he uses for the login. If a player changes his handle, it may be possible to take along his old ranking.

In
the following we present the first provisional top list (up to no. 50)
with all players or teams that have already played at least 15 regular
games (besides wins by default we also didn�t count blitz games in case
of tie-break). This number is still very small, so that for instance
the ICCF requires 30 evaluated games for a fixed rating. Only 12
players in our list already have a �fixed� rating in this sense, here
marked by bold type. The evaluation is based on 1489 regular games of
258 players. Further information (download included) will be published
after a test run on CSS-Online.

TOP 50 of Freestyle Chess, March 2007

Name (handle)Elo+-GamesScore Av.Op.Draws

1 Xakru2792139 1311767.6 %266441.2 %

2 Rajlich277080693770.3 %262154.1 %

3 Nebula2770150 1411668.8 %263337.5 %

4 Vvarkey2763164 1541570.0 %261633.3 %

5 Frigderi2734120 1131659.4 %266856.2 %

6 Jazzled272166543863.2 %262768.4 %

7 Zor_champ271381804663.0 %2620 39.1 %

8 EmilV269783692562.0 %261268.0 %

9 Icy452684111 1102356.5 %263943.5 %

10 Ibermax2680110 1081752.9 %266058.8 %

11 Intagrand2680 113 1102259.1 %261645.5 %

12 Flying Saucers267998952558.0 %262352.0 %

13 Hedgehog267489742261.4 %259468.2 %

14 Eve�est266488802358.7 %260365.2 %

15 Poweronoff266383793360.6 %258854.5 %

16 Elissa2662106 1052052.5 %264455.0 %

17 Tatar2654112 1092462.5 %256641.7 %

18 King Crusher263681783056.7 %258960.0 %

19 Spaghetti Chess263293862360.9 %255560.9 %

20 Rentner2263066654252.4 %261461.9 %

21 EL-SHADDAI2630127 1231861.1 %255144.4 %

22 Klosterfrau263078763857.9 %257452.6 %

23 Alansacount262877743458.8 %256658.8 %

24 Sergey_M2626137 1331556.7 %258046.7 %

25 Dieb Fritz261695922154.8 %258361.9 %

26 ZackS261388864159.8 %254436.6 %

27 Relic260784812956.9 %255958.6 %

28 Campolungo2605145 1431553.3 %258140.0 %

29 Equidistance2603102 1023051.7 %259136.7 %

30 PAKman2602173 1661758.8 %254111.8 %

31 Noritano2599136 1321659.4 %253443.8 %

32 Ciron259687873151.6 %258451.6 %

33 Tony Kosten2590126 1251752.9 %257047.1 %

34 Bychamp_II258898952558.0 %253252.0 %

35 Engineer2586119 1161755.9 %254552.9 %

36 Abeljusto2582107 1042358.7 %252147.8 %

37 Knilch hi2581128 1211560.0 %251153.3 %

38 Walden2567145 1431553.3 %254440.0 %

39 Alexisco2563137 1331556.7 %2516 46.7 %

40 Katzenmaier2562127 1241656.2 %251850.0 %

41 Goldbar254594922755.6 %250751.9 %

42 Sebi-chess2544155 1521556.7 %249833.3 %

43 Heffalump2539 110 1041656.2 %249662.5 %

44 Auryn2536125 1261747.1 %255647.1 %

45 Rainer Zufall253583843048.3 %254656.7 %

46 Fredi_z253382822450.0 %253366.7 %

47 Petr H�ba2519113 1092060.0 %244950.0 %

48 Souk251274861546.7 %253580.0 %

49 Hoshad2511101 1012450.0 %251150.0 %

50 WoDra251095922154.8 %247761.9 %

Preview on 2007

The 5th PAL/CSS Freestyle Tournament will
be the first of at least three tournaments in 2007. The exact dates in
summer and autumn are still to be fixed. Apart from the approved
concept for the time control of 60 min + 15 sec we do also think about
one tournament with longer, that is to say classical time control. Such
a tournament with 2 hours basic time per player would be fine in order
to demonstrate the high quality of Freestyle games even better then up
to now, and many players will be pleased by the fact to have more time
and less stress. In effct we will play only one classical game per day
instead of 2 or 3 rapid games. The only disadvantage is, that you will
have to spend more than a week, probably 9-10 days, if you want to
participate. The games will take place in the afternoon (CET = central
europeen time) until the early evening. The idea is to gain first
experience with this new type of tournament in August 2007 and provide
an attractive prize money.

Over
the months and years the Freestyle tournaments also mirrored the
development of modern hard- and software. In 2007, after we just faced
the transition to dual-core systems, there might be an increasing
number of quad systems involved. I personally suppose about 15 to 30
over the year. Also the use of a bigger number of 6-men tables may play
a role. The most appreciated engines in the 5th Freestyle Tournament will be the latest multi processor versions of Rybka (2.3), Fritz (10), Shredder (10), Junior (10.1) and Hiarcs (11). Besides some players will also use programs like Zap!, Chess Tiger, List, Gandalf, Loop, Fruit, Toga, Naum, Spike, Glaurung, Ktulu
etc. (necessarily this list has to be incomplete) for consultation or
for automatic play. As we learned from previous events there is no
panacea f�r Freestyle play. It all depends on your personal
possibilities and preferences, how you try to manage the various
factors like opening choice, plan, engine use, hardware, time and
teamwork, just to mention the six most likely criteria. What is leading
to success or to misfortune, you will only know afterwards, and even
that may be doubtable, as it is a matter of subjective interpretation.
For sure is, that there will be much room for experiments and that
Freestyle chess is one of the most exciting things to be found in
relation with computer chess. �Join in and have a try!� is the device.

Xakru is the new Freestyle Champion

By Arno Nickel

The Czech team Xakru was the big surprise at the 4th PAL/CSS Freestyle Final, held on Playchess.com on October 20-22. Jiri Dufek and Roman Chytilek, the two centaur players behind the nickname, had only been placed 10th in the preliminaries, but proved the old Freestyle wisdom: "the last shall be the first". In fact, they dominated the final with excellent play, and though they may have gained an advantage from being underrated and the "dark horse", nobody could begrudge them the $8,000 prize money.

Xakru – damn it!

Before we go into detail with the course of the tournament, which once again was played in rapid chess time controls (60 min per player and game + 30 sec per move), let's take a short look at extracts of the winners' report:

The Xakru team consisted of two players – the heart and core of team Jiri Dufek and the (sometimes too fierce) spirit Roman Chytilek. Jiri is 32 years old (2276 FIDE, 2568 ICCF IM) and works as system administrator. Roman is 30 years old (2394 FIDE IM, 2649 ICCF GM), and his profession is university teacher (political science). The Freestyle participation has been one of our frequent joint ventures. Most notable of others was a book "Bijte francouzskou" (Beating the French).

Jiri Dufek and Roman Chytilek of the winning Xakru team

We used mostly up to four computers with Rybka, Shredder and Loop 12. All have teo CPUs, none of them having a 64bit operating system. As we both like improvisation and adrenaline, we didn’t make any special opening preparation for the finals. Therefore, there wasn’t any special "book-cooking“ against our opponents. Nevertheless, we were able to make use of our extensive knowledge of the bright sides (and of course, less than bright ones) of engines. Especially Jiri was clearly ready, willing and able to offer nontrivial ideas and insights throughout the whole tournament, ideas that every engine developer would be probably very happy to be acquaint with. This, plus Roman's consistent (but responsible) opposition to engines and efforts to create and keep at the board as much "fog“ and confusion as possible, eventually led to success, which also offers very justified hopes for the next Freestyle tournaments. One thing remains yet to be decided – whether to further carry the banner of Xakru. Xakru, or better "K sakru“, means in Czech "Damn it!“. As a defending champions we will surely consider a label that would be much more presentable.

Jiri Dufek played from Usti nad Labem and Roman Chytilek played from Brno, distance about 250km, we were communicating via Skype. We got our first experience in cooperation in Freestyle during the tiebreak in the 3rd Freestyle, but there had been no chance to continue in the 3rd Final.

Flying Saucers

Dagh Nielsen

The second winner was – also surprising in some respects – was Flying Saucers, whom I had already introduced to you in my previous report as Dagh Nielsen from Danmark. The funny thing is, he had been placed 9th in the main tournament, one place in front of Xakru, so that we can read that table backwards, in order to get the winner's list. Dagh startet with 3 out of 6 in the final, so what could he really expect? I think, he never dreamt of winning $4,000 in the end (achieving 5.5 out of 9). But let's listen to his story:

The team Flying Saucers consisted of one player + computer(s). I am 29 years old (2163 FIDE), from Denmark, and a mathematician by education. This was the second Freestyle event I participated in.

I have been engaged in computer assisted chess for several years. It started out as opening analysis out of curiousity, and for about a year I have been focusing on making opening books for engines, with my engines battling it out on the Playchess server. That I would participate in the Freestyle events as active centaur and not as pure engine has never been in doubt, though.

My hardware in the preliminary was a dual core Opteron. Before the final, Vasik Rajlich had kindly agreed to let me use his quad Opteron, and helped me set it up with a UCI (UCI = engine protocol) pipe over the net. My technical setup then was:

Fritz 9 interface, with two instances of Rybka running. The quad on pipe running in 1-variation mode, and my own dual core running in 2/3/4-variation mode. This way, I would be alarmed by deep resources and assessments fast, while at the same time getting immediate information about the forcedness of the investigated positions, in other words, how many alternatives would be worth a check. In the previous Freestyle event and in some of the games of the preliminary in this one, I had had the Fritz 9 engine running as well, in order to get an aggressive second opinion. I discarded this option for the final, mainly out of a philosophy to keep things technically simple. For the same reason, I did not use tablebases. The games themselves, I played through the free playchess client.

My "strategy" for the final was simply to try to not lose any games due to horrible play or bad time management. Additionally, I tried to predict what openings could arise, and spent considerable time preparing for this, hoping that this would put me in position to also play for a win in some games. I have annotated 7 of my games from the final. The annotations are primarily intended for giving the reader a picture on what went on "behind the scenes", and I've tried to be as honest and open as possible. In the annotations, you can find more specific remarks about my considerations during and before the individual games.

In general, I've found the Freestyle events extremely exciting, both as participant and as observer. I like to think of Freestyle chess as "blitz correspondence chess". For the many people interested in correspondence chess, but who don't play due to time issues, the Freestyle events IMHO offer a thrilling alternative. In fact, I could see why many people would rather play Freestyle than correspondece chess, just as OTB players get addicted to online blitz and forget to visit their local chess club ;-) One weekend of playing, and you can put the games out of your head in good conscience. Freestyle chess can still be hard work though :P.

Here are some comments of mine to a few frequently asked questions about Freestyle chess:

Do centaurs hold any advantage over pure engines?

My take on this is that, yes, pure engines assisted by strong books and strong hardware can reach at least an average level. However, to reach the highest levels of play, usually a little extra will be necessary. I think the results of the Freestyle events so far confirm this. For example, for this final, only two pure engines qualified, even though they made up a good part (30%–50%) of the preliminary field.

Is human chess skill worth anything at all, or is all that matters skill at operating a computer?

My answer would certainly be similar to the one above.

I'm an average club player, would I have any chance to succeed?

Certainly yes! Just remember the sensational win of team ZackS in the first Freestyle event. There will no doubt arise situations where a lack of chess knowledge, intuition or skill will take a toll, as it did for me in this final. Also, perhaps one can say that weaknesses in certain aspects of the game put a limit to your flexibility. The set of types of positions you can sensibly afford to enter is reduced, and if it is reduced too much, odds are that you will be caught sooner or later. So, maybe knowing your weaknesses and how to avoid them from being exposed can be said to be an important skill.

I have average hardware, do I have any chance to succeed?

Yes. I myself qualified for the final on average hardware and with average chess skill. The key is to find ways to maximise your combined centaur skill. That being said, I firmly believe that I would not have stood many changes in the final without the additional hardware help that I got access to.

Overall, to succeed, in my opinion what is essential is not having any weak links in the total "chess entity setup" – no clearly inferior hardware, no insufficient practice in active analysis with engines under time constraints, no bad opening handling, and no largely missing chess understanding. Then one has a fair shot.

How high was the level of play in the final?

Not sure, I think overall very high. What is more important is that there were countless highly spectacular games in the final, and I certainly hope the spectators enjoyed watching them just as much as I think we enjoyed playing them. I also hope new readers will be inspired to take part in the fun in coming Freestyle events.

Summary

Four teams shared the prize money for the third place: Jazzled, Frigderi, Elissa and Nebula. I introduced all of them in my previous report. So this time I will make it short, especially as I haven't received any reports from these teams. Jazzled is already well-known as the 28 year old American Joseph Soney, who took the second place in the Third Freestyle Final. He is playing on a very fast hardware (Quad Opteron, which means 8 processors in total), with a selfmade opening book. Once more Jazzled proved to be a very solid team, it remained the only one undefeated.

This time Joseph let Rybka run as an automatic engine, the same as Nebula, who was the proud winner of the main tournament and whose real name is Anastasios Kakirdakis from Greece. I noticed that Nebula uses a gigantic book, often covering about 25 moves.

We may once more interprete the results of the final as a clear, but lucky dominance of skilful centaurs (equipped with powerful machines of course) over pure engines. In my opinion this is a very good message for Freestyle. Yet, the difference is not really as clear as it appears. If Nebula had won (instead of losing) its last game against Flying Saucers, it would have caught Xakru with also six points!

Elissa was the comeback of the famous Zacks, the young American team that won the very first PAL/CSS Freestyle Tournament in sensational style, though they were far away from a master degree in chess. Frigderi is a player named Pavel Bystrov, living near Bonn. So far he did not share any further information about himself. The only thing which might be sure is that he is not a German. So these four teams won each $500 dollars.

Rentner2, IM Joerg Blauert from Luebeck, had a bad start with his game versus Zorchamp. He consolidated in the middle of the tournament, but then broke down once again. He was perhaps the finalist with the most human input (which can be expected of an International Master), but again and again he slipped into horrible time pressure, which against engines is ten times harder than against "human only" opponents.

Rentner2, Icy45 (Finland) and Ibermax (England), had all 3.5 points. They all won only one game and lost three. Icy45 started the final as a centaur player, but the last three games, after he had only 2 out of 6, he switched to "engine only". In the last round Rybka succeeded in "passing over the red lantern", as we say in German, to Zorchamp. It remained unexplicable why Zor, after a good start with 2 out of 3, almost collapsed in the second half of the tournament. Some kibitzers guessed it might not be the real Zorchamp playing, but a substitute. I fear we have to accept the old wisdom “the answer is blowin’ in the wind”.

All in all we had a successful event, with a much lower rate of draws compared to the 3rd Freestyle Final. It's only 60% (I predicted: less than 66%) compared to 75% in the previos final. The whole series of Freestyle events in 2005 and 2006 was an interesting and still promising experiment. Let's see what Freestyle Chess will bring in future.